Sapphire Butterfly Blue
(Previously "One Butterfly")
Have you discovered yet the geography of whispers?
Like secrets, they can haunt you or soften the blow.
Surrealist drama
A poetic and surreal examination of the Salem Witch Trials formed into a sensory experience.
Historical Basis:
Bridget Bishop was the first woman to be tried and hanged as a witch in Salem Village, Massachusetts, 1692. During this time, a very strong belief in the devil was present. When the daughter and niece (Betty Parris and Abigail Williams) of Reverend Samuel Parris became strangely ill with bizarre and hysteric symptoms, and failed to improve, the village doctor, Samuel Griggs was called. He diagnosed the girls with “bewitchment” beginning what came to be known as “The Salem Witch Trials;” An occasion where 19 women and men were hanged, one man crushed to death, seventeen others left to die in prison and many others having been caused severe misfortune by the events. Simultaneously, these events were mirrored across Europe.
Many historians believe the girls and their friends who began to exhibit the symptoms were faking the illness because of a mixture of elements involving puritan life, including the ongoing frontier war, which occupied the minds with sudden and violent death, economic conditions, congregational strife, teenage boredom, and personal jealousies. The girls would contort into grotesque poses, fall down into frozen postures and complain of biting and pinching sensations, claiming the symptoms were due to curses put on them by witches in the village. In a time and village where the perception of the devil was very close and very real, what appeared to the townspeople as the devil’s work quickly became an obsession. Justice had to be exacted.
Betty Parris and Abigail Williams soon began to name their afflictors and the witchhunt began. The fate of many soon became sealed.
Production:
This script is to be the basis for a visual and auditory explosion of moments. Being short in textual length, it is very much director-centred, in that much of the onstage action is intertextual as well as musically and movement driven. This play is an attempt to merge theatre and dance, visual art, musical art and performance art. One actor can play Bridget Bishop, while a group of 3 or more actors can take on the many other roles, morphing into the different characters of the story (the girls, the villagers, the accused, shadows, etc.), although this is open for interpretation. The text is simply to be used as a core or foundation for a larger mirage of sensory images. Noises can build into a rhythm of sounds, which, accompanied by an imagistic scenario, is the type of creative episode that will bring this sensory world alive.
The use of wireless microphones are especially advantageous for this production, as they allow intimate sound to be transmitted to the audience and the sound can be manipulated with the assistance of effects processors and computer programs (i.e. Goldwave). Ultimately, the senses should be stimulated in all ways possible to fully construct a dream world that permits the incredible to transpire.
Characters:
There are many characters in the play, but they can be performed by as few as three people or as many as twenty, in monologue format or as an ensemble. An effective production can entail two or three men as the judges and other male roles, one or two women will as the female roles and one person as Bridget Bishop. In large productions, a chorus is a nice addition.
Approximate running time: Between 20 minutes to 3 hours